Wall Street Journal about Bernard Connolly

May We Speak Freely?
The Wall Street Journal Europe 2001-03-09

The European Union came under scrutiny again this week, following a ruling by the European Court of Justice against Bernard Connolly, a former top EU official responsible for monitoring monetary policy. In 1995, Mr. Connolly was sacked from his job for writing “The Rotten Heart of Europe,” a no-holds-barred critique of the way the EU was pursuing monetary integration.

According to the ECJ, Mr. Connolly “destroyed the relationship of trust with his employer by publishing, without requesting the prior permission prescribed by the Staff Regualations, material criticising, even insulting, members of the Commission and challenging fundamental aspects of Community policies, to whose implementation he was specifically assigned the responsibility of contributing in good faith.” Mr. Connolly answers that he was essentially dismissed on a charge of “seditious libel” against the EU, a doctrine which, he notes, would be inadmissible under U.S. or U.K. law, and which furthermore contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights.

The pity for Mr. Connolly is that the EU obeys neither U.S. nor U.K. law, nor is it a signatory to the Convention. And even if it were, Mr. Connolly’s case strikes us as weak. If it is true that he violated staff regulations to which he had agreed as the terms of his employ, he can hardly have expected to be treated otherwise. Whatever the differences between EU and U.K. law, the principle of not biting the hand that feeds you is surely one of universal application.

Yet if the EU’s legal case vis-a-vis Mr. Connolly has merit, the EU’s methods for dealing with dissent do not. Indeed, the EU’s penchant for secrecy, its insistence on hewing to a set line and its determination to squelch its opponents do more harm to its cause than Mr. Connolly’s opinions ever could.

Thus, following the publication of “The Rotten Heart of Europe,” the EU hounded Mr. Connolly, going so far as to distribute his picture to its security guards even while he remained head of his office. At length, the ECJ took the extraordinary measure of placing a gag order on the Commission to stop it from bad-mouthing its former employee. In a similar vein, the EU suspended Paul van Buitenen from his job before his whistleblowing finally managed to bring down the corrupt Santer Commission.

Then there was the remarkable brouhaha that ensued last year following the publication of an article by EU Ombudsman Jacob Soederman, who took to these pages to decry rules governing access to EU documents. “What the present system seems to do,” wrote Mr. Soederman, “is offer token measures of transparency while making it possible for some of the Commission’s most important work—as well as its more venal aspects—to remain cloaked in secrecy.” To this, Commission President Romano Prodi answered with an opinion piece of his own, in which he promised to make transparency the “byword of my mandate.” But he also fired off a private letter to EU Parliament President Nicole Fontaine, in which he denounced Mr. Soederman’s resort to the press as a “debateable use of his functions.” It was a classic instance of saying one thing while doing another.

Finally, take the case of State Watch, a civil liberties watchdog organization based in the U.K. The group has long requested documents concerning deliberations between the EU Council of Ministers and the U.S. government. At first, the Council refused to co-operate on grounds that it had not itself drawn up the documents. Yet when this argument was ruled illegitimate by Mr. Soederman, the Council merely switched tack, claiming the Secretariat General, rather than the Council itself, was in possession of the documents. The Secretariat General is, of course, the Council’s permanent organ in Brussels.

Intimidation, duplicity, secrecy and bureaucratic quickstepping are, of course, hallmarks of many governments. And in many respects the institutions in Brussels meet a higher standard of openness than many of the EU member states. The office of the Ombudsman, though understaffed and underfunded, serves an invaluable role; so too, one hopes, will a new office committed to detecting fraud.

But the EU is not a government; what legitimacy it has is derived not from the consent of the governed but from the perception that it is competent, honest and responsive. So far, it is falling short of all these goals. It will only do itself more harm if it acts as if it has something to hide while putting its vindictiveness on full display.

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